I have been pulling hair out with the \b ^ $ () and STUFF, but can't seem to do what should be a SIMPLE thing! $stuff="thisisthestuffwithnospaces\nmaybemore\n"; I just want $middle to equal everything in BETWEEN "thisisthe" and "withnospaces" ie $middle="stuff"; I got it working when I have words using the \b metacharacter, but just can't do it without! It'd probably be quicker to train a monkey!

If anyone can help me out I'll send 'em a ferrari and matching blonde.... probably...

BRILLIANT!! THANKS!! Duh! - How simple did your version look compared to what I was doing!!! I feel suitably dumb! I also need a routine to strip the brackets out of a line of text and push letters together if they are single letters seperated by a full stop or a space ie:

A L S (GROUP) LTD should become ALS GROUP LTD and T.N.T Europe Ltd should become TNT EUROPE Ltd

I am transfering a database, and thought it might be faster in PERL than the only way I really know how... BASIC! If you know how to do the above without spending too much of your valuable time on it please let me know, because I have learned more from you in one night than I have from the book in a whole weekend!